Deron Generally
Deron GenerallyThe opioid crisis has resulted in a country ravaged by corporate greed and betrayed by some of its own elected officials, following the aggressive promotion of OxyContin, a highly addictive drug from family-owned pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma.
With the help of whistleblowers, insiders, newly-leaked documents, exclusive interviews and behind-the-scenes access to investigations, and featuring expert input from medical professionals, journalists, former and current government agents, attorneys and pharmaceutical sales representatives, as well as sobering testimony from victims of opioid addiction, Gibney’s exposé posits that drug companies are in fact largely responsible for manufacturing the very crisis they profit from, to the tune of billions of dollars… and hundreds of thousands of lives.
Interweaving stories of personal tragedy from first responders, survivors and family members of opioid victims with the timeline of corporate greed and malfeasance, Part Two of THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY includes insights from former DEA agent Joe Rannazzisi; former DEA attorney Jonathan Novak; The Washington Post reporters Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Lenny Bernstein; Assistant U.S. Attorneys for Massachusetts David Lazarus, Nathaniel Yeager and Fred Wyshak; Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Ed Byrne; Resident Agent in Charge Lubbock Office, DEA Will Kimbell; former V.P. of Sales at Insys Alec Burlakoff; former Insys regional sales manager Sunrise Lee; and fentanyl dealer Caleb Lanier. Woven together, the character-driven stories form a larger narrative of shocking corruption.
HBO’s THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY, a two-part documentary directed by Emmy® and Academy Award® winner Alex Gibney (HBO’s “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” “Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief”), and presented in association with The Washington Post, is a searing indictment of Big Pharma and the political operatives and government regulations that enabled over-production, reckless distribution and abuse of synthetic opiates. Debuting MONDAY, MAY 10 (9:00-10:50 p.m. ET/PT), with Part Two airing the following evening, the film explores the origins, extent, and fallout of one of the most devastating public health tragedies of our time, with half a million deaths from overdoses this century alone, revealing that America’s opioid epidemic is not a public health crisis that came out of nowhere.
